Select Readings on Electronic Records


At the 50th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, Overture 20 from Potomac Presbytery sought to "Request [the] Administrative Committee to Research Use of Electronic Records for Denominational Purposes. Now with the 51st PCA Assembly, action on that overture moves ahead and a study committee is forming to take up the matter and present its findings at the 52nd Assembly in 2025. To assist in that effort, the following list of selected readings is presented. As of this writing, none of these items have been evaluated, and some of them may prove to be unhelpful. We will make every effort to come to a quick conclusion as to how suitable these are for our purposes and will make further notation on them soon. Additional materials will also be added to this list as we find them.

Articles:
• "Copyright and Preservation of Born-digital Materials : Persistent Challenges and Selected Strategies," by Katherine Fisher, The American Archvist, 83.2 (2020): 238-267.
• "Preservation and Access for Born-digital Electronic Records : The Case for an Institutional Digital Content Format Registry," by Kyle R. Rimkus, Bethany Anderson, Karl E. Germeck, Cameron C. Nielsen, Christopher J. Prom, and Tracy Popp. The American Archvist, 83.2 (2020): 397-428.

Books:
	• When We Are No More. How Digital Memory Is Shaping Our Future. by Abby Smith Rumsey. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2016. CONTENTS: Part One : Where We Come From. Chapter 1 : Memory on Display. Chapter 2 : How Curiosity Created Culture. Chapter 3 : What the Greeks Thought : From Accounting to Aesthetics. Chapter 4 : Where Dead People Talk. Chapter 5 : The Dream of the Universal Library. Part Two : Where We Are. Chapter 6 : Materialism : The World Is Very Old and Knows Everything. Chapter 7 : The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting. Chapter 8 : Imagination : Memory in the Future Tense. Chapter 9 : Mastering Memory in the Digital Age. Part Three : Where We Are Going. Chapter 10 : By Memory of Ourselves. Review: The American Archivist, 81.1 (2018): 255-258.

Reviews of Books:
• The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff, by Ofer Bergman and Steve Whittaker (2016). Review: The American Archivist, 81.1 (2018): 233-236.
• Digital Preservation Essentials, edited by Christopher J. Prom (2016). Review: The American Archivist, 81.2 (2018): 473-476.
• Building Trustworthy Digital Repositories: Theory and Implementation, by Philip C. Bantin. Review: Archivaria 86 (2018): 186-190.
• The No-Nonsense Guide to Born-Digital Content, by Heather Ryan and Walker Sampson. Review: The American Archivist, 82.1 (2019): 248-251.
• The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation, by Trevor Owens (2018). Review: The American Archvist, 82.2 (2019): 646-649.
• A Matter of Facts: The Value of Evidence in an Information Age, by Laura A. Millar. Review: Archivaria 89 (2020): 174-178.
• Records, Information and Data: Exploring the Role of Record-Keeping in an Information Culture, by Geoffrey Yeo. Review: Archivaria 89 (2020): 169-173.
• The Future of Digital Data, Heritage and Curation in a More-than-Human World, by Fiona R. Cameron. Review: Archivaria 95 (2023): 179-182.